Florida Dems, the DNC and the circular firing squad
Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 08:18:54 PM PDT
Its nice to be fought over even when no one is saying nice things about you. Its even nicer when those who are suddenly running in claiming to be your best friends are the folks who screwed you over in the first place.
Hillary wants our votes down here to count, but its a new found cause for her. The folks who were most responsible for our original disenfranchisement were Terry McAuliffe, Donna Brazile, and a whole host of long time Hillary faithful who were absolutely rabid about this issue when the Hillary campaign was going to be a cakewalk and the marching orders were to maintain the status quo so that she'd take the cake at the magic moment.
Fuck Florida said the Clintonistas. We don't need 'em anyway! Add to them the party gestapo who wanted to make an example of us. Nobody else much cared.
If there's anybody out there willing to look past whipping us for the delight in doing so, or using us as pawns because there's some short term advantage to counting or nullifying our vote for your preferred candidate, please follow me over the break.
What is insanely funny about this to me, is that almost no one appears to give a shit about the voters in Florida. I don't mean the functionaries, or the party leaders, or the candidates' organizers. I mean the voter who isn't wonky, doesn't know who their representative is, and thinks DNC is a medical procedure. You remember those folks, right? They're the ones we ask to vote for us on election day.
Yes, its nice to be fought over. Now that the Clintonistas need us all is forgiven, and we're supposed to somehow forget that the nastiest, most rabid Florida punishers have either done an about face or are trying to quietly walk away from the Clinton campaign without being called Judas!
And now its the Obama supporters and the party purists who have picked up the call. "Fuck Florida! We don't need 'em anyway."
The fact is, you do. We're especially vulnerable with our conservative democrats, our high proportion of military retired, our other elderly, and our many, many conservative Republicans. When we keep losing, you lose too.
There are two trends that tell the whole story. We're registering more Democrats, we've turned around a trend of electing more Republicans, and we're making gains.
Or I should say, we were making gains. State Senator Steve Geller ran a small-sample-size poll, and found a lot of residual anger over the whole issue. A do-over would have helped.
But he said the poll also indicated that if Florida does not have a delegation to the national convention, 5 percent of those surveyed would not vote in November and 14 percent would "seriously consider" voting Republican. He said another 12 percent weren't sure what they might do if Florida is unrepresented.
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Its nice that both sides have gotten a good lick at us through surrogates. The Obama campaign has defaulted to distant and disconnected surrogates, like kos and others here, to deliver the "Fuck Florida" message. The Clinton campaign has delivered both messages from people much closer to the campaign. First the "Fuck You" from the Braziles, then the public lamentations over our disenfranchisement (when an unimaginable turn of events cause it to suit her purpose) from the candidate herself.
But it never seems to suit the purpose of very many in the party to consider the long term goal of delivering this state for a Democratic candidate in November. So we form the circular firing squad. There are always more important short term goals to consider, and many of them give the other 49 a chance to give us a good swift kick in the groin. And after all, there will be plenty of time to figure out why we didn't see the big picture after November.
Florida looks mighty red tonight.
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